New York Metropolis’s housing disaster has been plain for many years. It drives gentrification and displacement in traditionally Black and Brown neighborhoods, and forces householders and tenants to depart the town whereas others find yourself on the streets or in shelters. The most recent uptick within the metropolis’s homeless inhabitants development from 2022 to 2024 is attributed to will increase in eviction proceedings after the COVID pandemic, a scarcity of reasonably priced housing, elevated rents, and the earlier inflow of asylum seekers, in accordance with a 2025 New York State Comptroller’s report.
NYC Well being + Hospitals (H+H), which runs the town’s security web hospitals and clinics, has a Housing for Well being initiative centered on growing supportive housing on underused hospital land particularly for the town’s homeless people, lots of whom are Black and Latino. Throughout the state, individuals experiencing homelessness final yr additionally fell disproportionately into these racial and ethnic classes, with roughly 10% affected by extreme psychological sickness or persistent substance abuse, stated the state comptroller’s report.
One of many extra common options metropolis management and advocates have provide you with to accommodate New Yorkers equitably amid the town’s stark housing disaster is solely to construct extra housing — however that’s solely half the battle.
As a metropolis entity, H+H was comfortable to make use of their “public land for public good” and assist concurrently sort out the housing and homelessness disaster, stated Leora Jontef, assistant vice chairman for housing and actual property at NYC H+H. She estimates that the town’s security web hospitals offered care to about 1 million New Yorkers with or with out insurance coverage. In 2024, about 80,000 of those individuals have been experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity — together with greater than 17,000 kids. Their healthcare is commonly costly, she stated.
“That is the inhabitants that involves the emergency division 3 times greater than housed New Yorkers. They’re frequent customers of our system,” stated Jontef. “After which, after they’re actually sick, for those who’re unhoused … you usually have conditions the place you must be admitted.”
In a pilot program, H+H adopted 200 previously unhoused sufferers over six months. Along with bettering contributors’ lives by discovering them housing, this system lowered hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and prolonged hospital stays, Jontef stated. The sufferers’ housing conditions ranged from supportive, with onsite medical companies, to receiving rent-subsidized residences.
“I really feel like dwelling. I might fall asleep, I might get up anytime. I might prepare dinner my meals,” stated Jesus Cerda, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the USA along with his father. He discovered himself homeless and affected by psychological sickness on the age of 16. In 2022, he lived in a studio residence in a former tuberculosis hospital in Queens and is highlighted as considered one of H+H’s success tales.
“I believe having this, all the pieces, a mattress — an enormous mattress, in comparison with a twin mattress within the shelter — that makes me really feel comfortable … that’s bettering my psychological well being and likewise my bodily well being,” stated Cerda. “This residence makes me really feel like a king as a result of I’m in management. It’s one thing that I by no means had earlier than.”
As of the tip of June 2025, greater than 3,000 sufferers and their households have benefited from the initiative’s housing navigation and medical respite programming, and almost 1,500 affected person households have acquired steady housing, stated H+H.
“It’s a privilege to be in a extra nontraditional place to essentially help people who find themselves coming to us with a whole lot of religion and belief at a second of vulnerability, and we [can say], ‘Okay, we’re going that will help you. What do you want?’” stated Jontef.
New responses
In March 2025, the housing initiative celebrated the opening of Woodhull Part II on Woodhull Hospital land in Brooklyn. It’s anticipated to interrupt floor on the Simply House mission on Jacobi Hospital’s land within the Bronx.
H+H can be advancing its proposal for the Morrisania River Commons mission, a 328-unit reasonably priced and supportive housing improvement mission and clinic within the Bronx that was part of the 2018 Jerome Avenue Neighborhood Plan and Rezoning.
In 2023, the Morrisania and Crotona neighborhoods of the South Bronx have been about 30% Black and 61% Latino, in accordance with New York College’s Furman Middle. About 36% of renter households in the neighborhood district have been severely rent-burdened that yr. Between 2010 and 2024, rents for greater than 8,000 models in additional than 4 buildings went up; 15% have been market price and 78% have been “income-targeted,” reported Furman.
The proposed constructing can be positioned on Gerard Avenue, changing the clinic’s car parking zone and annex. It could embody a mixture of studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom residences. The mission is supported by River Commons House owners LLC, Sort A Initiatives, BronxWorks, and L & M.
“We all know that good housing coverage is sensible well being coverage,” stated Ahmed Tigani, the town’s Performing Housing Preservation and Improvement (HPD) Commissioner, in an announcement. “We’ve seen how carefully they’re tied — when individuals have a steady dwelling, they’re extra prone to keep effectively, get care after they want it, and be a part of a stronger, safer neighborhood. This mission isn’t nearly fixing a disaster — it’s about stopping the following one.”
Challenges to beat
Nonetheless, the draw back of a majority of these tasks are that they take a very long time to get accredited, financed, and constructed when individuals are in dire want of housing right this moment.
“Now we have the land, however financing is all the time a limitation, and there’s restricted metropolis sources,” stated Jontef. “All of those packages have vital metropolis subsidies, that are nice, like housing rental subsidies and housing finance instruments. There’s simply a whole lot of tasks which might be within the queue.”
Adolpho Abreu, housing marketing campaign director at VOCAL NY, stated the Housing for Well being initiative builds on confirmed fashions for creating everlasting housing for these experiencing homelessness. “It will get us to having more healthy communities. We’re guaranteeing susceptible populations, particularly these experiencing psychological well being crises or simply want on-site medical companies, are offered for and gained’t essentially must journey far [to receive services],” stated Abreu.
He believes that the initiative may very well be efficient however may run into some points with neighborhood help, since there tends to be a “lack of compassion for folk experiencing homelessness, these with psychological well being points, or of us with lively drug use.” He additionally lamented that constructing reasonably priced housing takes so lengthy when greater than 2,500 models of supportive housing within the metropolis stay vacant, in accordance with the Metropolis Comptroller’s 2025 report.
Councilmember Althea Stevens, who oversees Metropolis Council District 16 the place the proposed Morrisania River Commons mission is slated to be constructed, got here into workplace after the Jerome Avenue rezoning plans have been put in place. She has religion within the mission total, however stays involved in regards to the affect extra supportive housing can have on the district. Ideally, Stevens wish to see extra family-sized residences versus studios, extra packages selling homeownership, and diversified ranges of incomes within the buildings.
There are near 17 shelters in Districts 16, 15, and 17 within the Bronx. “We went from being a district that had an awesome quantity of shelters to now being a district that’s constructing an awesome quantity of supportive housing,” stated Stevens. “I’m not against supportive housing. It’s an actual necessity, however we will’t all the time be the district. There must be variety in the place these items are being constructed, and we’d like extra sources.”
Subsequent steps
The proposed housing mission requires a vote within the Metropolis Council and mayoral approval to maneuver ahead with development.
